“A wonderful uplifting influence,” Mr. Williams called her, and refused to say anything, even when directly approached, as to “the facts” of her trouble. “It is an old story,” he would say. “She bears up wonderfully. She sacrifices her life rather than her principles.”
To Vivian, sitting now on a hassock at the lady’s feet and looking up at her with adoring eyes, she was indeed a star, a saint, a cloud of mystery.
She reached out a soft hand, white, slender, delicately kept, wearing one thin gold ring, and stroked the girl’s smooth hair. Vivian seized the hand and kissed it, blushing as she did so.
“You foolish child! Don’t waste your young affection on an old lady like me.”
“Old! You! You don’t look as old as I do this minute!” said the girl with hushed intensity.
“Life wears on you, I’m afraid, my dear.... Do you ever hear from him?”
To no one else, not even to Susie, could Vivian speak of what now seemed the tragedy of her lost youth.
“No,” said she. “Never now. He did write once or twice — at first.”
“He writes to his aunt, of course?”
“Yes,” said Vivian. “But not often. And he never — says anything.”
“I understand. Poor child! You must be true, and wait.” And the lady turned the thin ring on her finger. Vivian watched her in a passion of admiring tenderness.
“Oh, you understand!” she exclaimed. “You understand!”
“I understand, my dear,” said Mrs. St. Cloud.
When Vivian reached her own gate she leaned her arms upon it and looked first one way and then the other, down the long, still street. The country was in sight at both ends — the low, monotonous, wooded hills that shut them in. It was all familiar, wearingly familiar. She had known it continuously for such part of her lifetime as was sensitive to landscape effects, and had at times a mad wish for an earthquake to change the outlines a little.
The infrequent trolley car passed just then and Sue Elder joined her, to take the short cut home through the Lane’s yard.
“Here you are,” she said cheerfully, “and here are the books.”
Vivian thanked her.
“Oh, say — come in after supper, can’t you? Aunt Rella’s had another letter from Mort.”
Vivian’s sombre eyes lit up a little.
“How’s he getting on? In the same business he was last year?” she asked with an elaborately cheerful air. Morton had seemed to change occupations oftener than he wrote letters.
“Yes, I believe so. I guess he’s well. He never says much, you know. I don’t think it’s good for him out there — good for any boy.” And Susie looked quite the older sister.
“What are they to do? They can’t stay here.”
“No, I suppose not — but we have to.”
“Dr. Bellair didn’t,” remarked Vivian. “I like her — tremendously, don’t you?” In truth, Dr. Bellair was already a close second to Mrs. St. Cloud in the girl’s hero-worshipping heart.
“Oh, yes; she’s splendid! Aunt Rella is so glad to have her with us. They have great times recalling their school days together. Aunty used to like her then, though she is five years older — but you’d never dream it. And I think she’s real handsome.”
“She’s not beautiful,” said Vivian, with decision, “but she’s a lot better. Sue Elder, I wish — —”
“Wish what?” asked her friend.
Sue put the books on the gate-post, and the two girls, arm in arm, walked slowly up and down.
Susie was a round, palely rosy little person, with a delicate face and soft, light hair waving fluffily about her small head. Vivian’s hair was twice the length, but so straight and fine that its mass had no effect. She wore it in smooth plaits wound like a wreath from brow to nape.
After an understanding silence and a walk past three gates and back again, Vivian answered her.
“I wish I were in your shoes,” she said.
“What do you mean — having the Doctor in the house?”
“No — I’d like that too; but I mean work to do — your position.”
“Oh, the library! You needn’t; it’s horrid. I wish I were in your shoes, and had a father and mother to take care of me. I can tell you, it’s no fun — having to be there just on time or get fined, and having to poke away all day with those phooty old ladies and tiresome children.”
“But you’re independent.”
“Oh, yes, I’m independent. I have to be. Aunt Rella could take care of me, I suppose, but of course I wouldn’t let her. And I dare say library work is better than school-teaching.”
“What’ll we be doing when we’re forty, I wonder?” said Vivian, after another turn.
“Forty! Why I expect to be a grandma by that time,” said Sue. She was but twenty-one, and forty looked a long way off to her.
“A grandma! And knit?” suggested Vivian.
“Oh, yes — baby jackets — and blankets — and socks — and little shawls. I love to knit,” said Sue, cheerfully.
“But suppose you don’t marry?” pursued her friend.
“Oh, but I shall marry — you see if I don’t. Marriage” — here she carefully went inside the gate and latched it— “marriage is — a woman’s duty!” And she ran up the path laughing.
Vivian laughed too, rather grimly, and slowly walked towards her own door.
The little sitting-room was hot, very hot; but Mr. Lane sat with his carpet-slippered feet on its narrow hearth with a shawl around him.
“Shut the door, Vivian!” he exclaimed irritably. “I’ll never get over this cold if such draughts are let in on me.”
“Why, it’s not cold out, Father — and it’s very close in here.”
Mrs. Lane looked up from her darning. “You think it’s close because you’ve come in from outdoors. Sit down — and don’t fret your father; I’m real worried about him.”
Mr. Lane coughed hollowly. He had become a little dry old man with gray, glassy eyes, and had been having colds in this fashion ever since Vivian could remember.
“Dr. Bellair says that the out-door air is the best medicine for a cold,” remarked Vivian, as she took off her things.
“Dr. Bellair has not been consulted in this case,” her father returned wheezingly. “I’m quite satisfied with my family physician. He’s a man, at any rate.”
“Save me from these women doctors!” exclaimed his wife.
Vivian set her lips patiently. She had long since learned how widely she differed from both father and mother, and preferred silence to dispute.
Mr. Lane was a plain, ordinary person, who spent most of a moderately useful life in the shoe business, from which he had of late withdrawn. Both he and his wife “had property” to a certain extent; and now lived peacefully on their income with neither fear nor hope, ambition nor responsibility to trouble them. The one thing they were yet anxious about was to see Vivian married, but this wish seemed to be no nearer to fulfillment for the passing years.
“I don’t know what the women are thinking of, these days,” went on the old gentleman, putting another shovelful of coal on the fire with a careful hand. “Doctors and lawyers and even ministers, some of ‘em! The Lord certainly set down a woman’s duty pretty plain — she was to cleave unto her husband!”
“Some women have no husbands to cleave to, Father.”
“They’d have husbands fast enough if they’d behave themselves,” he answered. “No man’s going to want to marry one of these self-sufficient independent, professional women, of course.”
“I do hope, Viva,” said her mother, “that you’re not letting that Dr. Bellair put foolish ideas into your head.”
“I want to do something to support myself — sometime, Mother. I can’t live on my parents forever.”
“You be patient, child. There’s money enough for you to live on. It’s a woman’s place to wait,” put in Mr. Lane.
“How long?” inquired Vivian. “I’m twenty-five. No man has as
ked me to marry him yet. Some of the women in this town have waited thirty — forty — fifty — sixty years. No one has asked them.”
“I was married at sixteen,” suddenly remarked Vivian’s grandmother. “And my mother wasn’t but fifteen. Huh!” A sudden little derisive noise she made; such as used to be written “humph!”
For the past five years, Mrs. Pettigrew had made her home with the Lanes. Mrs. Lane herself was but a feeble replica of her energetic parent. There was but seventeen years difference in their ages, and comparative idleness with some ill-health on the part of the daughter, had made the difference appear less.
Mrs. Pettigrew had but a poor opinion of the present generation. In her active youth she had reared a large family on a small income; in her active middle-age, she had trotted about from daughter’s house to son’s house, helping with the grandchildren. And now she still trotted about in all weathers, visiting among the neighbors and vibrating as regularly as a pendulum between her daughter’s house and the public library.
The books she brought home were mainly novels, and if she perused anything else in the severe quiet of the reading-room, she did not talk about it. Indeed, it was a striking characteristic of Mrs. Pettigrew that she talked very little, though she listened to all that went on with a bright and beady eye, as of a highly intelligent parrot. And now, having dropped her single remark into the conversation, she shut her lips tight as was her habit, and drew another ball of worsted from the black bag that always hung at her elbow.
She was making one of those perennial knitted garments, which, in her young days, were called “Cardigan jackets,” later “Jerseys,” and now by the offensive name of “sweater.” These she constructed in great numbers, and their probable expense was a source of discussion in the town. “How do you find friends enough to give them to?” they asked her, and she would smile enigmatically and reply, “Good presents make good friends.”
“If a woman minds her P’s and Q’s she can get a husband easy enough,” insisted the invalid. “Just shove that lamp nearer, Vivian, will you.”
Vivian moved the lamp. Her mother moved her chair to follow it and dropped her darning egg, which the girl handed to her.
“Supper’s ready,” announced a hard-featured middle-aged woman, opening the dining-room door.
At this moment the gate clicked, and a firm step was heard coming up the path.
“Gracious, that’s the minister!” cried Mrs. Lane. “He said he’d be in this afternoon if he got time. I thought likely ’twould be to supper.”
She received him cordially, and insisted on his staying, slipping out presently to open a jar of quinces.
The Reverend Otis Williams was by no means loathe to take occasional meals with his parishioners. It was noted that, in making pastoral calls, he began with the poorer members of his flock, and frequently arrived about meal-time at the houses of those whose cooking he approved.
“It is always a treat to take supper here,” he said. “Not feeling well, Mr. Lane? I’m sorry to hear it. Ah! Mrs. Pettigrew! Is that jacket for me, by any chance? A little sombre, isn’t it? Good evening, Vivian. You are looking well — as you always do.”
Vivian did not like him. He had married her mother, he had christened her, she had “sat under” him for long, dull, uninterrupted years; yet still she didn’t like him.
“A chilly evening, Mr. Lane,” he pursued.
“That’s what I say,” his host agreed. “Vivian says it isn’t; I say it is.”
“Disagreement in the family! This won’t do, Vivian,” said the minister jocosely. “Duty to parents, you know! Duty to parents!”
“Does duty to parents alter the temperature?” the girl asked, in a voice of quiet sweetness, yet with a rebellious spark in her soft eyes.
“Huh!” said her grandmother — and dropped her gray ball. Vivian picked it up and the old lady surreptitiously patted her.
“Pardon me,” said the reverend gentleman to Mrs. Pettigrew, “did you speak?”
“No,” said the old lady, “Seldom do.”
“Silence is golden, Mrs. Pettigrew. Silence is golden. Speech is silver, but silence is golden. It is a rare gift.”
Mrs. Pettigrew set her lips so tightly that they quite disappeared, leaving only a thin dented line in her smoothly pale face. She was called by the neighbors “wonderfully well preserved,” a phrase she herself despised. Some visitor, new to the town, had the hardihood to use it to her face once. “Huh!” was the response. “I’m just sixty. Henry Haskins and George Baker and Stephen Doolittle are all older’n I am — and still doing business, doing it better’n any of the young folks as far as I can see. You don’t compare them to canned pears, do you?”
Mr. Williams knew her value in church work, and took no umbrage at her somewhat inimical expression; particularly as just then Mrs. Lane appeared and asked them to walk out to supper.
Vivian sat among them, restrained and courteous, but inwardly at war with her surroundings. Here was her mother, busy, responsible, serving creamed codfish and hot biscuit; her father, eating wheezily, and finding fault with the biscuit, also with the codfish; her grandmother, bright-eyed, thin-lipped and silent. Vivian got on well with her grandmother, though neither of them talked much.
“My mother used to say that the perfect supper was cake, preserves, hot bread, and a ‘relish,’” said Mr. Williams genially. “You have the perfect supper, Mrs. Lane.”
“I’m glad if you enjoy it, I’m sure,” said that lady. “I’m fond of a bit of salt myself.”
“And what are you reading now, Vivian,” he asked paternally.
“Ward,” she answered, modestly and briefly.
“Ward? Dr. Ward of the Centurion?”
Vivian smiled her gentlest.
“Oh, no,” she replied; “Lester F. Ward, the Sociologist.”
“Poor stuff, I think!” said her father. “Girls have no business to read such things.”
“I wish you’d speak to Vivian about it, Mr. Williams. She’s got beyond me,” protested her mother.
“Huh!” said Mrs. Pettigrew. “I’d like some more of that quince, Laura.”
“My dear young lady, you are not reading books of which your parents disapprove, I hope?” urged the minister.
“Shouldn’t I — ever?” asked the girl, in her soft, disarming manner. “I’m surely old enough!”
“The duty of a daughter is not measured by years,” he replied sonorously. “Does parental duty cease? Are you not yet a child in your father’s house?”
“Is a daughter always a child if she lives at home?” inquired the girl, as one seeking instruction.
He set down his cup and wiped his lips, flushing somewhat.
“The duty of a daughter begins at the age when she can understand the distinction between right and wrong,” he said, “and continues as long as she is blessed with parents.”
“And what is it?” she asked, large-eyed, attentive.
“What is it?” he repeated, looking at her in some surprise. “It is submission, obedience — obedience.”
“I see. So Mother ought to obey Grandmother,” she pursued meditatively, and Mrs. Pettigrew nearly choked in her tea.
Vivian was boiling with rebellion. To sit there and be lectured at the table, to have her father complain of her, her mother invite pastoral interference, the minister preach like that. She slapped her grandmother’s shoulder, readjusted the little knit shawl on the straight back — and refrained from further speech.
When Mrs. Pettigrew could talk, she demanded suddenly of the minister, “Have you read Campbell’s New Theology?” and from that on they were all occupied in listening to Mr. Williams’ strong, clear and extensive views on the subject — which lasted into the parlor again.
Vivian sat for awhile in the chair nearest the window, where some thin thread of air might possibly leak in, and watched the minister with a curious expression. All her life he had been held up to her as a person to honor, as a man of irreproachabl
e character, great learning and wisdom. Of late she found with a sense of surprise that she did not honor him at all. He seemed to her suddenly like a relic of past ages, a piece of an old parchment — or papyrus. In the light of the studies she had been pursuing in the well-stored town library, the teachings of this worthy old gentleman appeared a jumble of age-old traditions, superimposed one upon another.
“He’s a palimpsest,” she said to herself, “and a poor palimpsest at that.”
She sat with her shapely hands quiet in her lap while her grandmother’s shining needles twinkled in the dark wool, and her mother’s slim crochet hook ran along the widening spaces of some thin, white, fuzzy thing. The rich powers of her young womanhood longed for occupation, but she could never hypnotize herself with “fancywork.” Her work must be worth while. She felt the crushing cramp and loneliness of a young mind, really stronger than those about her, yet held in dumb subjection. She could not solace herself by loving them; her father would have none of it, and her mother had small use for what she called “sentiment.” All her life Vivian had longed for more loving, both to give and take; but no one ever imagined it of her, she was so quiet and repressed in manner. The local opinion was that if a woman had a head, she could not have a heart; and as to having a body — it was indelicate to consider such a thing.
“I mean to have six children,” Vivian had planned when she was younger. “And they shall never be hungry for more loving.” She meant to make up to her vaguely imagined future family for all that her own youth missed.
Even Grandma, though far more sympathetic in temperament, was not given to demonstration, and Vivian solaced her big, tender heart by cuddling all the babies she could reach, and petting cats and dogs when no children were to be found.
Presently she arose and bade a courteous goodnight to the still prolix parson.
“I’m going over to Sue’s,” she said, and went out.
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Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 21
